ICYMI the UK’s best roast is officially from Hereford.

NewsSunday, October 15th

ICYMI the UK’s best roast is officially from Hereford.

You can stop arguing over whose Mum does the best roast potatoes. Because as of Thursday night, the Observer made it clear that no-one’s Mum does roasties better than the Bookshop does roasties.

The stripped-back city centre restaurant that grew out of, and alongside, A Rule of Tum’s Burger Shop, was last week given the title of Best Sunday Dinner at the Observer Food Monthly awards.

If you’ve been, you know. If you haven’t, you should. The whole deal echoes what you think of when it comes to That Great British Tradition – meat, veggies and gravy that’ll take the edge off your hangover better than any ibuprofen – and yet at the same time, it freshens up the legacy.

Much as I love a pub roast as much as the next man (I don’t - more here - but that’s beside the point), this isn’t your timber-framed local, with last night’s beer mats working like a little Strongbow air fresheners on your table as you wait for the queue to die down at the carvery station, just so you don’t get sunburn from the hotplates as you wait for your bone-dry roast beef.

For so many reasons, The Bookshop sunday dinner is a different. But all the ones that matter start and finish with what’s on your plate.

The meat - like on their Steak night – comes from and only from Tom Jones, who supplies half of London’s top restaurants and Actions Bronson’s favourite kebab shop. He does so from a farm about 15 miles from the Bookshop. The veggies travel about the same distance, courtesy of Seb’s Organics. And whoever puts together the menus, does so with such seasonal subtlety and well-rooted originality so as to please and surprise with even Britain’s most-frequently eaten dish.

Brothers Edwin and Dorian Kirk set up A Rule of Tum with Jon Stead, opening their first of two restaurants three years ago, their second a year later, started Hereford Indie Food in 2016 and now have a shiny ‘O’-shaped award to sit somewhere in AROT’s bare brick HQ. And you get the feeling they’re just getting started.